Fralic: Can’t change a tire or sew on a button? When did we become so helpless?

Shelley Fralic, Vancouver Sun05.02.2012

You know the scenario, have likely witnessed it yourself: The retail clerk, faced with a malfunctioning cash register, is unable to make change. She simply cannot compute that the $5 bill she has just taken in exchange for that $4.31 grande latte requires 69 cents in return.

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You know the scenario, have likely witnessed it yourself: The retail clerk, faced with a malfunctioning cash register, is unable to make change. She simply cannot compute that the $5 bill she has just taken in exchange for that $4.31 grande latte requires 69 cents in return.

The conversation that ensues is painful, often requiring pencil and paper and a simple math calculation that falls to the usually older customer, because to the clerk’s frustration (but, oddly, not embarrassment), there is no calculator in sight and, oh sorry, she never learned how to do math without benefit of a battery or electric outlet.

We have, by design or default, become a society of the useless, seemingly unable to stickhandle the most basic tasks that our forefathers and foremothers did every day as part of the human construct that has long defined the survival of the fittest.

We have, in these modern times, lost the ability, or perhaps more saliently, the will, to do the practical, the universal duties that became second nature the day that first cave dad made fire and fed the family.

Like knowing how to sew on a button.

Like being able to turn off the water to the house, or the gas to the hot water tank.

Like driving a stick shift, or changing the oil or a flat tire or a wonky windshield wiper on a car.

Like making macaroni and cheese that doesn’t come in a cardboard box with instructions.

Simple skills all, the standard household jobs adeptly undertaken by the generations that came before because there was no other choice, because it was expected, and because no one had yet invented ways to deflect such responsibility.

You know it’s true. We are, by our own intent and admission, a clutch of the utterly helpless.

Not that there’s any argument likely forthcoming, but in case convincing is required, consider the Harris/Decima poll released Tuesday out of Toronto that wags its finger in wonderment that Canadians have let the standard skills and knowledge of how things work, and of how to do and fix things, slip from our grip.

And how there seems little appetite for learning basic everyday tasks, for fending for ourselves.

The poll, which surveyed more than 1,000 Canadians last month, was conducted as part of an assessment for a national non-profit called Skills Canada, which charts the growing shortage of skilled workers in the workforce and found that, as the press release says, “almost half of all Canadians are not able to complete basic skills including installing a faucet or replacing a zipper without some help.”

It found that 28 per cent of those surveyed overall didn’t know how to change a tire, while nearly half of the women surveyed said they couldn’t.

There will be those who say good riddance to all of the above, and keep the technology and convenience coming.

We have better things to do with our time these days, they might counter, and are just too busy with work and other imperatives that are more important, and that’s why we hire strangers to mow our lawns, paint our bathrooms and care for our kids and dogs.

That’s why we turned The Dangerous Book For Boys and The Daring Books For Girls, which nostalgically detail once-inherent childhood aptitudes like how to read a compass and how to play tag, into bestsellers. It’s why we invented cars that parallel park for us, and buy packaged, pre-washed salads.

After all, who needs to learn how to chop wood or iron a shirt or make lasagna when we can now spend our time fake finger painting on an iPad?

The good news? The poll reports that we can still change a light bulb, and even hang a picture on the wall. Provided we actually have a hammer.

sfralic@vancouversun.com

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Fralic: Can’t change a tire or sew on a button? When did we become so helpless?

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